Offer stress

[iguria]

Last year we moved house. The intention in the move was to be in a certain place so eldest son could get into a school.

We moved in on 20th October, lease started on 1st Oct so we been paying council tax since then.

We applied for schools with our new address. The address is well within the required distance for the school. It’s not even close (0.6 miles from here, limit is 0.9 miles).

Anyway offer comes back with a waiting list for the school of choice and an offer for another school. We do some digging and find out the council have based the application on our old address.

They had written to us at our new address. The letter never arrived. They didn’t call us, they didn’t email us, they didn’t take any notice of the council tax we were paying them every month. They just decided to amend our application and measure from our old address.

We have spoken with the admissions office. They have now remeasured based on the correct address. Son is no 1 on the waiting list and they expect some declines- but looked after kids could go in front of him.

We hopefully will get an offer in April but no guarantee.

We feel very hard done by.

I am drafting an appeal but it looks like the council have an argument even in case of a mistake that they can’t exceed
Their numbers.

Can any experts or those with experience in appeals advise whether that’s right. Should I simply concentrate on the mistake in the appeal? Have I got any kind of prospect of success?

Iguria, I think you will get a place in the second round of offers and, in the unlikely event that you don't, you would definitely get your place on appeal, but @prh47bridge will be able to give you firmer reassurance. I've tagged him because your thread title may be too vague to attract attention.

If you owned the property at your old address have you severed ties with it? i.e. sold it/ rented it to someone else long term?

Unless there is some reason to justify the council's use of your old address (e.g. you still owned your previous house), this should be a nailed on win at appeal. The council will argue that the school is full but an appeal panel should look at this as an obvious mistake which justifies admitting your son. The only way your appeal should fail is if there are a lot of other people in the same boat and the appeal panel decide the school can't cope with all of them, which is unlikely.

If the council has admitted making a mistake they should admit your son without the need for an appeal. However, many LAs ignore this and make parents go through the stress of an appeal.

Thanks for the useful comments. The comments about the old property are relevant.

Our sale had not gone through of our old house but we had moved out before we applied. The sale went through a couple of weeks later. There was a short period of a few weeks where we had to pay council tax at both properties as our sale was delayed (much to my annoyance as you can imagine!)

We did the correct thing and applied at our primary address - the new house. We were paying council tax there. The council wrote to us to check we lived there and the letter never arrived.

Our old home is now owned by another family and has been for many months. The council know this as that family pay council tax there.

I foresee the overlap of the properties being raised so will try to deal with it in the appeal. We have evidence such as the removal firms invoice, utility invoices to show that we had actually moved.

Had they communicated effectively with us here this confusion would not have occurred. Sending a letter and taking no response as a reason to disregard the application content (in the face of evidence to the contrary from council tax records) just isn’t good enough.

Sounds like a slam dunk to me. By placing your child top of the waiting list based

Sorry!

Based on your new address they have effectively admitted that is the correct address to use, which of course means they made an error in using the old address.

Yes i think that’s right. I also forgot another fairly significant detail. After submitting the application we actually rang the admission office and confirmed they had our correct melee address by telephone.

So, at the point at which you applied you effectively had two addresses? One owned and one rented? In our LA if you apply from one address but own another property within 20 miles then your application is flagged as fraudulent. Might be why this has happened.

Where were you living when the deadline for applications fell?

I think you still owning the 2 properties at the time of application closing has caused the problem. Many LAs, in those circumstances, will take the old address if you still own it at the application deadline, even you have moved. If your LA is one of those, they may not have done anything wrong. It is correct for you to go on waiting lists with your new address, as that as your only address now, but at the time of application you still owned the other property.

It's a difficult one as it is clear your intention was to move, and not to use the new address fraudulently. However it is possible they have applied the rules correctly.

Fingers crossed a wait list spot comes up ASAP, but do appeal too.

Correct. Our sale was due to complete so we had movers booked and we moved lock stock plans barrel in October. The sale then went through but the property was empty.

The admissions forms all require you to put your primary address. Which was where we lived.

@Porcupineintherough

Where were you living when the deadline for applications fell?

At the new address where we remain. This is now our house. The old address is now owned by somebody else.

@iguria

Correct. Our sale was due to complete so we had movers booked and we moved lock stock plans barrel in October. The sale then went through but the property was empty.

The admissions forms all require you to put your primary address. Which was where we lived.

Indeed, BUT many LAs will, in these circumstances, take the old address anyway, if you still own it - the letter that you didn't get would, I expect, have asked you to prove that you were in the process of selling it (ideally passed exchange by Oct 31).

If you want to PM me the LA, I can see if they have this specification.

Indeed, BUT many LAs will, in these circumstances, take the old address anyway, if you still own it

That is true. However, the OP has told me which school is involved. Neither the school nor the council has anything about this in their published admission arrangements. Not really relevant, but I find the council's published information to be extremely poor and in breach of the Admissions Code - there is no composite prospectus for a start. I won't say more as I don't want to give away where it is.

Admission authorities must comply with their published admission arrangements. As both the school and the council simply say that you must use the address where the child normally lives, I can see no justification for them using the OP's old address. In my view they've got this wrong and they really ought to offer the OP a place without forcing her to go through an appeal.

@prh47bridge Aha - thank you for clarifying and checking. Indeed, I agree, if the admissions information did not mention this, they are in the wrong.

Thanks all for help here. Most helpful all round.